The corporate elites, which have seized control of ruling institutions including the government and destroyed labor unions, are re-establishing the inhumane labor conditions that characterized the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Venezuela Tries To Pay Russian Debt With CryptocurrencyIf crisis-hit Venezuela was hoping to pay off its US$3.15-billion debt to Russia with its new cryptocurrency, those hopes have been shattered as the Russian Finance Ministry announces that it won't be accepting digital coin.

This is typical of the contradictory policies adopted by clueless governments. Youth are unemployed because there are too many of them, not because there are too few job opportunities. Under a declining net energy regime, it will be increasingly difficult to create more jobs, and also to persuade people to make more babies. Governments should go with the flow by welcoming and accommodating lower birthrates. These policies are the opposite of what is needed. Attempts to arrest collapse are futile. I guarantee this will end in tears. -- RF

U.S. oil production is already exceeding 10 million bpd – a level higher than Saudi Arabia's current output, and the United States is expected to soon topple Russia as the world's largest crude oil producer, possibly as early as later this year.

Don't get excited. Much is being made of the jump in US shale oil production, but while oil production in Saudi Arabia and Russia is still profitable, America's shale-oil industry has never been profitable. That's because shale oil is junk energy. And now costs are going to rise even more. -- RF

It's highly doubtful any of this will come to pass. And transport wouldn't actually be hydrogen-powered because the hydrogen just serves as a battery, with the energy originally coming from somewhere else. -- RFAmerican adults just keep getting fatter

Fresh food shortage while motorists face wait on fuelFresh food stocks are unlikely to make it to Irish supermarkets until the weekend at the earliest - with delivery drivers not taking to the road until the red weather alert is downgraded.
When trucks stop running, everything shuts down. Are you ready? -- RF

Study Says West Texas Ground Sinks Under Permian Oil DrillingIntensive oil and gas drilling in the Permian is causing a large swath of West Texas to sink and uplift, a new study by the Southern Methodist University, Dallas, says, suggesting that decades of oil production have destabilized localities in an area of about 4,000 square miles.

#DeleteFacebook? Privacy proves hard to protect onlineAnyone tempted to #DeleteFacebook after the personal data of millions of users fell into the hands of a political consultancy is still likely to be monitored by the social network, which tracks nearly 30 percent of global website traffic.

## Propaganda/censorship/fake news/alternative facts ##How Beijing weaponizes 'comfort women' as propaganda tool'Comfort women' are not just a relic of Japan's aggressive imperial history. They are today a key tool in Beijing's disinformation strategy to isolate Japan and the USA in East Asia

The experts are "puzzled" because they don't understand that it takes a lot of energy to run a large industrial society like that of the US. Under net energy decline, someone must take a hit, and here it's homebuilders. -- RF

Partisan hack Trump supporters are worthless. Partisan hack Democrats are equally worthless. Only those who have awakened from the relentless barrage of mass media psyops and seen beyond the fake uniparty trap can see what's going on. It's up to us to awaken everyone else.

It's just as I've said again and again: America has a China-style one-party system. -- RF

Evolutionary Dead-EndsSpeeding down a dead end roadSince the birth of car culture more than a century ago, lavish consumption of energy has not been a bug but a feature. That's now a feature we can ill afford, as we attempt the difficult and urgent task of transition to renewable energies.

Abe's party set to pursue changes to war-renouncing charterPrime Minister Shinzo Abe's party is poised to propose constitutional revisions that would enshrine the nation's armed forces into the charter but retain its war-renouncing pledge, a product of compromise focused on not alienating a skeptical public.

It's easy to blame rich property developers and government housing policy, while at the same time ignoring the biggest problem: the growth paradigm. There are simply too many people. Even if developers build a slew of new housing on the land they hold, thanks to the growth paradigm that new housing will fill up in no time, and Hong Kong will be right back where it started from. The proposed solutions are all non-starters as long as the fundamental problems of perpetual growth and overpopulation are left unaddressed. -- RF

American Public Troubled by 'Deep State'Although most Americans are unfamiliar with the term 'Deep State,' according to recent polling they are nevertheless skeptical of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy.